Sunday, November 14, 2010

Some of the comments on the last post have brought up complexity. Yes, the optimum pattern is relatively complex. But there are other patterns which are a lot less complex, and only slightly worse.

For example, with that Chaotic meta-gem, you could follow Suicidal Zebra's pattern of Purple gems + 1 Blue gem. It simplifies the gemming a great deal, and is only a little bit worse. You could even go Purple in Red/Blue slots and Green in Yellow slots (or Yellow and 1 extra Blue in a Blue Socket), and that would easily get you the meta-gem activation and your socket bonuses.

There are other meta-gems you could use. Maybe they aren't as good as this one, but it would make gemming easier if you were concerned about that.

There's a thread espousing the same thing for classes on the DPS forums. The poster is complaining that the optimum rotation is getting too complicated and asks for some specs to have a simpler optimum rotation, but not do as much damage.

I'm not sure I really understand this request. You can alway simplify your rotation and do just a little bit less damage. For example, if you're a Retribution paladin, drop Holy Wrath and Consecration entirely. Your damage will go down slightly, but that rotation would be a lot easier to manage.

Or take Destro warlocks, which is the poster's concern. Drop Corruption and maybe Chaos Bolt. Don't worry about the Imp Soulfire buff. Unfortunately, the Shadow Bolt buff is a group buff so it's harder to drop. But now your rotation is just Immolate, Conflag, Bane, Incinerate, and instant Soulfires when they proc. That's a lot easier to keep track of.

I thought this was the ideal that people wanted. A moderately complex rotation for good damage, or a highly complex rotation for a bit more damage. An easy gemming strategy for good effectiveness, or a complex gemming strategy for optimum effectiveness.

When reforging was introduced, I seemed to be the only person who didn't like it, because I saw it would introduce this level of complex tweaking. But everyone else seemed to think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don't really see the difference between reforging and this gemming strategy. If anything, this meta-gem is easier to deal with than hit caps, expertise caps, and haste soft-caps.

So where then does this vision of complexity go wrong?

Posted by
Rohan

3 comments:

At least in my case, I see gemming as a pure annoyance. In most cases it's not adjusting to caps or making anything close to a meaningful decision, but is instead maybe a gem here and there for a cap and then stack the one best stat, at a very high cost. Reforging adds tradeoffs, actual tradeoffs, not 'opportunity cost' trades which for the average person just aren't real or meaningful.

The meta gem I think just combines the worst of both; the potentially excessive complexity of balancing caps when reforging with the expensive changing of gems.

There are many differences. First, reforging is much cheaper then regemming.

Then, reforging is easier to do and can be done without interacting with other players. You visit the NPC which can reforge all your pieces. Regemming requires you to find a player to craft each and every gem for you or you have to buy them in the AH, if they are available. Reforging can be done one piece at a time, regemming is harder as you have to find a player for every new gem.

And last you are exaggeregating the "hit caps, expertise caps, and haste soft-caps" issue. Let's not care about the top guilds as they will have no problems with regemming. Let's look at the other guilds. And for them the haste soft-cap doesn't exist as they will not have enough haste on their gear.

And having to care about hit and expertise is easier if you don't have to also care about gem color.

Plus reforging adds a clear value to the player. Reforging allows you to adjust mage gear to the needs of a warlock, or vice versa. Gemming on the other hand is just a boring time and gold sink without a real purpose. Sure, you can and will use reforging to get rid of excess hit. But mostly it can be used to convert these crit pants into crit/haste pants for one class and the haste gloves into haste/crit gloves for the other class.

They should remove the current boring stat gems altogether and and replace them with interesting stuff. Like the meta gem.

I don't like reforging either.It adds a 3rd layer of things to do for your new item before it is usable to you, these days you have to throw hundreds of gold at an item before it is better than your previous, and to be honest that time and money can be spent more wisely than this.

And i know, they add customization to the game so that everyone isn't the same. But one big customization is much better than 3 small ones.